Hello Readers! As you probably know by now, I frequently receive questions from other hypnotherapists about how to improve their skills and abilities for a number of different issues that they work with. From time to time, I will let you know about it when I write in response to an interesting set of questions.

I recently received a series of questions about smoking cessation work from another hypnotherapist. I thought that the questions and my answers would be useful to other hypnotherapists, so I have posted part of it here. Use the link above if you would like to read the whole Q & A.

Hi Tina,

Thanks for you kind comments about my book (co-authored with Jerry Kein), Hypnosis and Hypnotherapy: Basic to Advanced Techniques for the Professional. Regarding the writing style of the book, you are exactly right, since I do a lot of teaching, I wanted to approach it in a very explanatory style which would be easy to digest. I wanted it to be a very practical book! So, thanks again.

Regarding your questions about doing the Informed Child Technique for smoking cessation session, let me first tell you that we approach our work with smokers in two different ways:

Regular 5-PATH(TM) sessions, where we go right to the cause of the inability to quit smoking, and neutralize the emotional components, while using the insights gained to supercharge the direct suggestion work done at the end of each session. This approach is used when it is determined that the smoking problem has a strong emotional factor, i.e., smoking to deal with the emotional factors, both from the past and in the present, presenting in the client’s life.

A special abbreviated version that takes only two, one to one and half hour sessions. In this case, it has been determined during the previous interview process with the client, usually on the telephone, that the smoking problem is mainly a bad habit in which emotional factors do not play a significant role. To learn more about this approach please read article #4 on this page of our website, http://www.hypnosiscenter.com/free-articles-list-of-hypnosis-articles.htm.

To answer your questions more directly:

You asked, “[Should I] regress them back to a time before they smoked the first cigar (or cigarette) and do informed child (let adult talk to child & give the insight)?” (Please click on the link above to continue reading the Q & A.)